Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of collaborative computing and more particularly to private meta-data management in a collaborative computing environment.
Description of the Related Art
Collaborative computing refers to the use by two or more end users of a computing application in order to achieve a common goal. Initially envisioned as a document sharing technology among members of a small workgroup in the corporate environment, collaborative computing has grown today to include a wide variety of technologies arranged strategically to facilitate collaboration among groups as small as two people, or as large as a world-wide community. Thus, different collaborative applications may focus at groups of different sizes. No longer merely restricted to document sharing, the modern collaborative environment can include document libraries, chat rooms, video conferencing, application sharing, and discussion forums to name only a few.
A collaborative computing application enjoys substantial advantages over a more conventional, individualized computing application. Specifically, at present it is rare that a goal of any importance is entrusted and reliant upon a single person. In fact, many goals and objectives can be achieved only through the participation of a multiplicity of individuals, each serving a specified role or roles in the process. Consequently, to provide computing tools designed for use only by one of the individuals in the process can be short sighted and can ignore important potential contributions lying among the other individuals involved in the process.
Modern collaboration tools combine e-mail with other functions to integrate e-mail seamlessly into end user daily activities in an activity-centric collaboration tool. Activity-centric collaboration tools recognize that it is not enough to help people manage their e-mail, but to help people manage their work by associating communications and information feeds around a topic or activity. In an activity-centric collaboration tool, e-mail messages, synchronous communication such as instant messages, screen images, files, folders and to-do lists can be combined into an activity thread by a team allowing the team to switch easily between asynchronous and real-time collaboration.
In this regard, an activity thread might include the messages, chats and files exchanged among members of a team participating in a group project, collectively referred to as “activity objects”. More specifically, an activity object such as a task description can be associated with meta-data, which can include for example one or more persons related to that activity, their respective roles such as “assigner” and “assignee,” and various dates such as the date-of-assignment, the date-due, the date-actually-completed, comments to the activity, and so on. Notably, the meta-data can be shared meta-data in sense that all members associated with an activity object can access and utilize the meta-data.
On occasion, collaborators prefer to maintain activity object meta-data private from the view of other collaborators belonging to the activity object. Notwithstanding, conventional activity-centric collaborative tools do not distinguish between the private and shared nature of meta-data for an activity object. As such, it is not possible to restrict access to meta-data for an activity object. Consequently, collaborators are forced to maintain private-meta data for an activity separately from and externally to the activity-centric collaborative tool thereby defeating the unified interface of the activity-centric collaborative tool.